Customer Segmentation Approaches

Segmentation beats personalization. Personalization is terribly inefficient... (and oftentimes unnecessary outside of highly strategic enterprise selling). Think about the ads that really grab your attention. None of them have your name in them. Or mention podcasts you were interviewed in or posts that you wrote. These ads work because they're segmented based on patterns amongst small-ish groups of people. Outbound should be treated similarly. Pro tip: this approach works WAY better over the phone than via email. The expectation for personalization and quality is much higher in emails than over the phone. Here are a few ideas for segmenting your lists so you don't have to personalize so much: ✅ By region/location If you sell anything brick & mortar, SLED, etc—segment your accounts by geographic region. You really don't have to personalize much when you can: - Name-drop local businesses/organizations - Drop the location This sounds like: "Hi David, we work with Fit & Fashion right down the road in SLU. It's Jason with ________. Ring a bell?" ✅ By tech stack Let's say you sell a tool that enhances Salesforce. Or Jira. Or some other specific tool. Segment your accounts by tech stack. This sounds like: "Hi Katie, we're partnering with engineering teams who wish sandboxes were way easier to set up and use in Zendesk. It's Jason with ________. Got a min?" ✅ By persona Let's say you sell to ecomm solutions to SMB retail business owners. This sounds like: "Hi Tom, we're working with several retailers in the Seattle area. It's Jason with ________. Heard our name tossed around?" (H/T Armand Farrokh) ✅ By trigger This list gets pretty extensive. Hiring, job changes, customer/champion change, M&A, expansion/contraction, promotion, etc This sounds like: "Hi Dave, congrats on the promotion. It's Jason from __________. Was just talking to a new HR leader yesterday who's running into all kinds of complications scaling international hiring. That by chance something you're running into?" ✅ By niche One of my favorites. Take a well-recognized logo like Rippling. You could go after direct competitors, but it's even better to focus on non-competitive products selling to the same personas. This sounds like: "Hi Cierra, we're working with Rippling to help scale their product suite for HR leaders. It's Jason with ________. Thought you might want to hear how they've doubled ACV in the last 6 months. Have a min?" ~~~ Before you think of personalization, start with segmentation. Do the work upfront to avoid having to customize too much. Agree or disagree? We're training entire sales orgs at companies like Shopify, Rippling, Zoom, and many more on how to land more meetings with outbound. Interested in custom training for your team? DM or email me jason [at] outboundsquad.com for more info.

We've worked on 500 positioning projects. 95% of the companies get this wrong 👇🏻 When I ask each company to "describe your ideal target customer," they all do the same thing: Start listing company attributes: “Our ICP is SaaS companies based in Europe in EdTech with 1000 employees" But a list of firmographics doesn't constitute a marketable segment. Simply being a certain size or being located in a geographic region does not guarantee the companies will actually need or want your product. There's a better way to segment, and it guarantees that the people you do outreach to will at least have the NEED for your product. 1) Target customers in a "mature market" centered around existing product category You're going to build a segment starting with the companies that recognize an existing product category and are actively shopping for it OR currently have/use it. So for example, if you have launched a CRM, your target market might begin with all the companies that are actively shopping for CRMs or using CRMs right now. That way, when you pitch them your CRM, you know that it will not be irrelevant — assuming you have a compelling argument. You can use the same differentiated argument to get the shoppers to use you and those already using a CRM to consider switching to you when their contract expires. This is essentially the equivalent of buying shelf space in a busy store and looking to capture the incoming demand of the daily shoppers looking for that specific product category. 2) Target customers in an "immature market" centered around a job-to-be-done If you want a more greenfield market with less vendor-level competition, you can create a segment based on people all trying to accomplish something (something that your product makes easier/cheaper/better, etc.) Your outreach to this market will be relevant in the sense that you'll be speaking directly to something they are trying to accomplish (again, to say nothing of how compelling or uncompelling your solution is). However, this group is "immature" because they've never bought a solution like yours before. They weren't shopping for what you provide. You'll have to explain it to them and convince them you're worth of allocating budget. This is essentially the equivalent of door-to-door sales to pitch something new and novel related to something a homeowner is currently doing or struggling with.

Identifying your target audience is step one. Success in business requires much more: It's one thing to know who you're selling to. It's another thing to know: - Where they spend their time - What mindset they're in when they encounter your message - What triggers them to take action That's the message behind this Lamborghini quote: Don't spend money trying to reach buyers in the wrong places. Most brands ignore this principle. They launch campaigns and run ads without asking fundamental questions: ➡️ Where does our customer actually spend time online? ➡️ What moment are we trying to reach them in? ➡️ What problem are they trying to solve when they see our message? The platform matters as much as the message. But so does the context. If you're selling enterprise SaaS to tech leads... They're searching Google for solutions. That's intent-driven behavior. Instagram won't capture that moment. If you're targeting founders running DTC brands... They're listening to podcasts during commutes,  checking Slack between meetings, and reading emails at night. They're not passively scrolling TikTok looking for business tools. If you're marketing luxury wellness retreats... Your buyers are researching through referrals and testimonials. They want proof from people they trust,  Not direct response ads interrupting their feed. Understanding this changes how you allocate budget. Your customer isn't everyone. And being present on a platform doesn't mean they're in buying mode. Someone scrolling Instagram at 11 PM is in entertainment mode. Someone searching Google at 2 PM is in solution mode. It’s the same person, but with a different intent and conversion likelihood. That's why relevance is a critical component of any scalable advertising system. At Ad Pros, we map out three things before launching anything: ✅ Audience behavior:  Where they spend time and what they're doing there ✅ Platform mechanics:  Which platforms reward the type of content that fits your message ✅ Timing and intent:  When they're most likely to act and what triggers that action The right message is only half of the work that needs to be done. To convert, you need the right message, at the right time, on the right platform. Ready to add $1m/month to your eCommerce business? Join the waitlist: https://lnkd.in/e-Av-tdY Do you know where your audience spends most of their time?  Leave a comment below with your thoughts. ♻️ Repost to share this reminder with your network.  Follow Nehal Kazim for more advertising strategy.

Segmentation is a powerful tool in data science—by grouping entities with similar characteristics, companies can tailor experiences, drive growth, and better meet the needs of distinct customer or supply groups. In a recent blog post, Airbnb’s data science team shared how they built a structured framework to segment their global supply into distinct “supply personas.” Rather than using traditional approaches like RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis, they grounded the segmentation in the platform’s unique business dynamics—especially calendar-based behaviors that reflect how listings are used throughout the year. The team began with exploratory analysis and identified four key behavioral features: availability rate, streakiness, the number of quarters with availability, and the maximum consecutive months of availability. These signals were then fed into an unsupervised clustering model (k-means) to group similar listings. To make the results interpretable and usable at scale, the clusters were used to train a supervised model (i.e., a decision tree), allowing for consistent and scalable persona assignments. This framework enables Airbnb to apply a shared language around supply—supporting decisions in personalization, experimentation, and beyond. It’s a nice example of how thoughtful segmentation can bridge human intuition, modeling techniques, and operational needs. #DataScience #MachineLearning #Analytics #Airbnb #Segmentation #MLInterpretability #SnacksWeeklyonDataScience – – –  Check out the "Snacks Weekly on Data Science" podcast and subscribe, where I explain in more detail the concepts discussed in this and future posts:    -- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gKgaMvbh   -- Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gFYvfB8V    -- Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gcwPeBmR https://lnkd.in/gBu4gKpz

Inflection points are for real. The key is to stay in the game long enough & increase the luck surface area to hit hockey stick hyper growth. What is the nature of these inflection points? Across our experience at The Pant Project, and speaking with other consumer brand founders, we have seen inflection points of a few natures. 1. New hero SKU unlock: A product goes viral (e.g., Earthy RFD Jeans or Korean Pintuck Pants) and unlocks a whole new audience set in consumers at record low CACs and record high repeat rates. The most iconic hero SKU unlock company of all time would probably be Apple, with its iPod, iPhone, iPad level breakthrough category innovations. 2. New channel unlock: Something changes in market dynamics for a new channel to emerge (e.g., Quick Commerce) which unlocks a new go to market strategy (GTM) for certain players. FMCG brands have unlocked unreal scale on qCom in the past year. Fashion brands are lining up as vertical qCom expands and larger players like Myntra also get into mNow (30 min delivery). 3. Viral content unlock: Brands go viral on certain bits of content (e.g., Dollar Shave Club video that amassed millions of views, or Stanley cups and Crocs shoes having their marketing moment) and those unlock hyper growth phases. We have seen this with our Inklock Black No Fade Jeans ad at Dhobighat or our founder led video ads. 4. New geography unlock: Indian brands going global is likely to increase over time. That said, international expansion is still risky as it means understanding a new market, new market dynamics and marketing, pricing and service strategies. What's more exciting is that even within India, new geo unlocks could mean something as simple as opening retail presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities to build trust and grow customer base across a nation that is already so large and diverse. 5. New customer segment unlock: Your brand could have been a core millenial brand, and with some product like baggy jeans, could have unlocked a new segment like more Gen Z shoppers. You can also expand customer segment TAM by including a new price point (value shoppers vs. mass premium vs. luxury shoppers). Serving a new audience means re-learning their behaviours, and you have to be sure to closely monitor how the new cohorts behave differently from the old ones. 6. External factors, e.g., change in market dynamic: This could be something like the banning of real money gaming where they used to buy 20% of ad inventory on Meta & during IPL and so relative advertising competition is lower this season. Or a regulatory change like the positive impact on consumer demand of GST rate change where apparel below Rs 2500 has gone from 12% to 5% GST. Structural change provides windows for real growth opportunities. The fun of being a founder is staying in the game, consistently compounding until you sense an inflection point, and then smashing the right setup to hit some big sixes 🚀

If I was running ABM at a fast-growing security company (like Wiz, Snyk, or Netskope), here's how I'd avoid wasting money on bad-fit accounts. 👇 AI Segmentation. Most companies segment by industry. They say something like: "We target Tech, Retail, and Hospitality companies with 1,000+ employees." Motel 6 and Airbnb show why this breaks. Same firmographic profiles. But very different business situations, needs, and priorities when it comes to information security (or any tech purchase). You wouldn't sell to them the same way. AI Segmentation helps you uncover and target the highest value segments for your business, beyond basic industries. Here's how I would do this for a security company: 1.) Segment on business situation (not industry). -- Analyze your best customers (high NRR, high ACV). -- Group by specific situations that align to your value prop. e.g. Security Maturity Level, Security Use Cases, Compliance Sensitivity, etc.  -- Find the *natural* clusters based on value, not generic industry labels. 2.) Identify segments with AI. -- Use Keyplay AI to categorize every account in your market. -- Backtest segments against historical data to find which segments have the highest NDR, ACV, and Win Rates. -- Find new ICPs, outside generic vertical groups. 3.) Action the data -- Create ABM plays at intersections with highest win rates. -- Develop content specific to each segment combination (e.g., "Cloud Security for Advanced DevSecOps Teams in Retail") -- Refine your segmentation models as you grow. This process can reduce non-ICP Spend (waste) by 20-30% and help you find thousands of net new target accounts. Don't just throw your budget at industries. Find the segments where your solution resonates most, where you win often, win fast, and win big. That's strategic segmentation. p.s. If you want me and my team to kick-start this process for you, we're offering a free strategic segmentation analysis to CMOs at SaaS security companies with >$20M ARR. Get your report here --> https://lnkd.in/gMezS4Zk #ABM #ICP

Find new unmet customer needs by four ways of looking … Identifying unmet customer needs, pains or dreams are crucial. To increase your chances of accurately detecting customers’ problems and dreams, you must diversify how and where you look. That’s why I introduce in my new book ‘Breaking Innovation Barriers’ the ‘Four Ways of Looking’, a new model, originally developed by Louis Barsoux, Michael Wade, and Cyril Bouquet. It involves two main approaches: improve your vision of mainstream users and challenge your vision by looking at unconventional users. 1. The Microscope Strategy. By zooming in on the experiences of your mainstream users you can identify unsurfaced needs through regular focus groups, interviews, or questionnaires. You step into a role of an anthropologist to understand the passions, frustrations, needs, and wants of your users. 2. The Panorama Strategy. By this way of looking, you can find unmet needs of mainstream users by looking at aggregated data, such as errors, complaints, and accidents, that amplify weak signals. Digital tools make it much easier to observe the behaviour of large numbers of individuals. The ‘big data’ needed can be collected from multiple sources like apps and smartphones and can be analysed for trends. 3. The Telescope Strategy. With this strategy you study fringe users, extreme users, nonusers, or even misusers. Demands from small niches are often dismissed as irrelevant. But when you zoom in on users at the periphery, you might uncover pain points that are relevant to the masses too, especially when they are lead users. 4. The Kaleidoscope Strategy. You can also look at distant groups together and find similarities that show unmet needs. It’s like spotting patterns in a kaleidoscope. The challenge, especially for managers in established companies, is to think beyond the usual groups like suppliers, distributors, and competitors. Make use of digital tools and AI to quickly analyse masses of data and identify patterns. Use this new model to diversify you way of finding new unmet customer needs. #customerneeds #jobstobedone #innovation #customerinsights

🎯 Case Study: Reducing Customer Churn in a Subscription-Based Startup A SaaS startup offering monthly subscriptions noticed a spike in customer churn, especially within the first 3 months of joining. The leadership wanted to understand: Who’s churning? Why they are churning? What actions can reduce this? 🔍 Step-by-Step Analytics Approach: Excel – Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): Imported CSV files with user activity logs, subscription status, and feedback scores. Identified outliers and missing values. Created pivot tables to spot patterns by age, region, and plan type. SQL – Deep Dive into Behavior Patterns: Joined user table with activity logs. Discovered: Users who had <5 active days in their first 30 days were 70% more likely to churn. Power BI – Created interactive dashboards showing: Churn rates by cohort Churn vs engagement Impact of support ticket resolution time Filtered dashboards by region, age group, and pricing tier. 💡 Key Business Insight: ➡️ Most churned users never used the product beyond the first week and didn’t get onboarding support. ➡️ Regions with slower customer support response saw 25% higher churn. 📈 Action Taken: ✅ Introduced a structured onboarding journey (emails + calls) in the first 10 days ✅ Automated help guides via chatbot ✅ Targeted re-engagement for at-risk users This is the kind of real-world business problem we break down, solve, and present in my upcoming Business Analytics Bootcamp. ⏰Starts in 5 days Enrol here - https://lnkd.in/gTBGbTC6

If you are writing sales messaging that could apply to anybody in your TAM, you're writing sales copy that nobody gives AF about. OUCH! I know that might be hard to hear, but here's the hack to better segment your TAM in 2025. ➡️ The harsh truth is that Founders who take a "boil the ocean" approach to selling in will fail. Here's how you can get better results in 3 steps: Step 1 - Move your focus from everybody who *could* possibly buy from you to the group of folks who are most likely to buy now, buy at a high price point, and later renew or be a referral source. Step 2 - From that much smaller group of accounts, create segments. These are not the traditional segments that help your organize your territories. These are segments that help you speak the language of a deep sub-set of prospects. I suggest at least 5 layers of segmentation blending firmographic data, signals, and contact-level data. EXAMPLE: You sell production line automation software. You believe your ICP is: US-based supply chain executives in manufacturing organizations with at least 1k employees. Great start, but it's time to add 5+ layers of segmentation before you can create a message that matters. Segment 1: Midwest "Manufacturing Belt" only Segment 2: Chief Supply Chain Officers only Segment 3: Machinery manufacturing only Segment 4: 50,000 to 100,000 employees Segment 5: New CFO hired in the past year Now you are only speaking to the CSCO or a sub-industry working in the region where you have the strongest social proof. By tightening the employee range you know they have a big enough problem to solve (+ can pick the best name drops) and a new CFO signals an openness to (re)explore cost-saving software. Step 3 - Use this process to launch dozens of micro-campaigns that speak to specific sub-sets of your territory because you've created enough segmentation to be 99% sure your copy will be RELEVANT to them. This is THE only way I've found to personalize at scale. I love teaching orgs how to better segment their accounts and create segment-specific value props. I call it #ValueBasedSegmentation ➡️ The result is: - Highly relevant copy - Emails that can be fully automated - High CTRs/replies without tedious personalization 📌 How do you personalize at scale?

There’s an odd concept in ecommerce that once a customer has shopped with you, they’ll always continue to. The reality is that the vast majority of ecommerce brands don’t focus on their existing customer cohort, instead obsessing over new customer numbers. This is a disaster for brands that have grown exponentially, especially in smaller populations like Australia. Why? Because even if you have 250,000 “customers”, how many of them are truly active? And how many are dormant? How do I define dormant? Those who haven’t engaged with your brand in the last 12 months. For the majority of brands we see data for, it’s something like 80% of customers who are dormant. Now, if you’re obsessing over new customer acquisition and excluding the 80% who haven’t engaged with your brand in 12 months, your addressable market is significantly smaller than it used to be. This means you can’t possibly keep scaling unless you pull other levers in your business, such as re-engaging and nurturing your existing customers. Acquiring new customers is valuable, but keeping the ones you already have is far more cost-effective and leads to greater long-term returns. The key is recognising that retaining customers takes work and should not be a business expectation. So, what’s the solution? A holistic approach to customer cohort management can breathe new life into dormant segments, turning them into active and engaged buyers again. Owned media and Meta will play a part in this. We can supercharge this through owned media by infinitely identifying your return customers and adding them to flows. This not only maximises the lifetime value of your customers but also creates a more sustainable business model, especially as you move beyond the first few years of rapid growth. Don’t let your existing customers slip through the cracks. They’re a goldmine waiting to be reactivated!